Question about versions of Vb

[Boss]

Which version is least server intensive? I am planning moving from the UBB to the Vb. My question is which version is the most efficient and is least taxing on the server? We routinely have over 1,000 concurrent people online.

Also is it possible to purchase and dowload any of the older versions of the Vb if they are less server intensive?

[tubedogg]

The only version of vBulletin available is the latest version. Occasionally there will be a beta of a newer version available (like with UBB) but older versions than the latest 'stable' version are not made available.

With 1000 concurrent users on UBB you must have a heck of a hardware setup! How many posts do you have? How many new posts per day do you have?

[Boss]

We prune once a week. We get over 1,200 new topics per day.

We have dual Gig processors with 4 Gig of RAM. Will this setup handle our traffic on a Vb?

[tubedogg]

I don't want to promise but it sounds like it should.

Keep in mind with vBulletin you will probably not need to prune much, if it all; unlike with UBB the number of posts is usually not a factor in server load. Even at your current rate it would take you two years to get to the number of posts some of our largest boards have.

[Boss]

We have alot of lurkers also. We get about 1.5 million hits per day. Does this matter so much or just posters?

Also we have small periods of extremely high traffic, which nearly doubles normal levels. Normal being 1,000 concurrent. I only know of the 1,000 concurret because I installed the UBB who's online hack one night messing around. I removed it to save resources. Could it handle a few thousand with the Vb?

[Martin]

1000 concurrent users on a UBB? I find that extremely hard to believe, even on a machine as sweet as that.

What was your cookie timeout set at?

[George L]

okay i'll take a stab

1. is your UBB who's online hack measuring users over a time interval ? i.e. 1000 users online during the past 15 minutes ? vBulletin's current active user display is based on a 15 cookie (configurable in vB admin panel).

2. vBulletin is PHP/MySQL database powered and ultimately how much you can handle will depend on hardware, how mysql, php, apache, linux is configured and mysql's capabilities.

MySQL can handle around 600 - 1000 max connections if PHP, Linux, Apache and more importantly MySQL are configured properly http://www.mysql.com/doc/L/i/Linux.html.

Max_connections is the max simultaneous connections to MySQL and should not be confused with how many current active users/who's online display reports.

i.e.

You can have 1000 current active users (in vB) or who's online displayed (in UBB) but only be using 300 max_connections to MySQL. 300 users could be accessing at the same moment in time the database by replying to a post, whereas the other 700 users can be just reading a thread or viewing the front forum page.

So with vB how much you can handle would ultimately depend on how many concurrent connections to mysql (not what is displayed on current active user display/who's online list)

I have seen forums with 700 - 995 currently active users display on vB but the forum's mysql database is only handling 200 - 500 max_connections (concurrent) to the database. Remembering that the display is based on a 15 minute interval, some members may have left within that 15 min interval, some may not be concurrently accessing the database etc.

when you say 1,200 new topics you mean threads ? or individual posts ?

[Boss]

The 1,000 was in a 15 minute interval.

The over 1200 posts is the total I get when I go todays active topics.

We have had simaltaneuos downloads set as high as 250. We backed them off a little because it seemed to perform better.

I would not know how many connections to MySql we could have.

To go with our dual processors and RAM we have a raid1 striping mirroring drive array to improve write speed.

So what do you think? Can we do it? Was their any questions I forgot. I am started to get sleepy...

[Martin]

the number of concurrent users you say you have is probably a little bothersome, but it can easily handle the number of posts. I get roughly 4k posts/day.

do you have a URL for your board? I'd really like to see that active a UBB. I didn't think such a beast could operate on anything less than Deep Blue.

[Mike Sullivan]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/

Most users ever online was 1135 on 01-02-02 at 05:18 PM.

Essentially concurrent users in a 15 minute period.

Their server info:

Yes, you can mention us. BUT HE WILL NEED TWO SERVERS...Trust me! We tried with one.

Server Specs....We have TWO Dell PowerEdge 2550, Duel 1 Ghz Processors, 2 Gigs of ECC Memory, Three 18.1 Gig UltraWide 10,000 RPM SCSI Drives in a RAID5 configuration setting on a 128 Meg RAID5 Controller. One is used for the Web server and the other is used for the MySQL server.

Note the part about 2 servers: running one for each specific program greatly helps performance.

[Boss]

Thats kind of disappointing. I do not think we can afford two servers

[Steve Machol]

I'd really like to see a UBB forum that can handle 1000 concurrent users. What's the URL to your board?

[Boss]

Okay this question might best be for Ed or David Bott, but anybody can answer. I can get a second server (but not as suped up as our current one). My question is which one will be doing the most work? The one for the MySql or the one doing the webserving? Do I use the 4 Gig Dual processor with the raid for the web server or the MySql server?

[John]

Boss,

Could you let us know the URL for your forum. This would *really* help us to judge the sort of hardware that you would be looking, by letting us look at the posting habits of your users, etc.

Thanks!

John

[ubbuser]

Sorry to butt in, but Boss how much bandwidth (in gb / day) your board uses, and do you have something like mod_gzip module compression going?

Why are you upgrading to vB, as UBB is handling so many users?

BTW I just moved from UBB to vB , and am just an end user myself.